The VPs Duke it Out

Plus, the one year anniversary of October 7th, and the longshoremen make waves.

Although focus groups tended to split close to evenly on who won, the pundit consensus following the debate was that J.D. Vance won, because he showed up clean and respectable for once and treated Walz decently. Also, the pre-debate spin about Walz suffering from nerves turned out to be true. 

In general, I think Walz does himself a disservice by being as self-deprecating and submissive as he often is. Yes, he is the supporting sidekick and not the protagonist of his ticket. Yes, the Republican Party is characterized right now by any number of servile politicians who debase themselves comically in their bootlicking of Donald Trump. But Walz could do a better job of asserting himself. This is politically incorrect, but he comes across as what leftists want a white man to be: a nice ally who gets out of the way for the feminist heroines, but supports and encourages them from the sidelines. If we wanted to be especially politically incorrect, we might say that Walz comes off very “beta.” This might play well with the Democrats’ base, but it doesn’t play well with many voters. 

Admittedly, when you’re running against a candidate who muses about using the Justice Department to go after the families of people he doesn’t like, you don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be normal. Walz is normal. It may be a schtick, but it’s an age-old schtick public figures have employed since the dawn of time (“I’m just a girl from Plano”). Including the two presidential candidates, I’d rather have a beer with Walz than anyone else in this race, although that isn’t saying much.  

J.D. Vance did well in the debate in part because there weren’t any questions about Ukraine, a topic about which he cares nothing, as he has told us himself. If they had asked about Ukraine, I wonder whether he could have resisted playing to the Benny Johnson fan club.

I want to pause for a moment on the fact-check of Vance regarding Haitian immigrants. The moderators announced at the beginning that there would be no fact-checking. Then Margaret Brennan fact-checked him. Vance handled it well, but it was still an unmistakable display of partisanship by the people who are supposed to be the referees. There isn’t any nice way to put it, but this is how we got Trump. The left plays dirty and the mainstream media sticks its thumb on the scale for the Democrats every time, in a pattern going back for a century, and eventually the right gets tired of it and says that we’re done nominating nice guys who play by the rules and we’re going to nominate the guy who sticks the other teams’ heads in the toilet. 

To this day, the lasting appeal of Trump lies in the fact that after decades of lopsidedness against Republicans, the GOP nominated a guy who kicked Democrats where it hurt. And then when Republican voters had resigned themselves to the inevitable loss (to a woman who was already boasting about how her opponents lay in the dirt-bin of history) after the mainstream media did what it always did and dragged the Republican down, Trump pulled an inside straight and won and the same people who had been preparing to rub Republicans’ noses in their terrible nomination choice were in tears. Trump didn’t just kick the Democrats and the mainstream media where it hurt. He got away with it. 

Of course, the jubilation this caused drove half the party into insanity, and they’ve been cult followers ever since. Some of us are still waiting for a Republican candidate who can take the fight to the left in a coherent fashion and doesn’t roll over when the mainstream media insults him. (Four years of chaos at the southern border and Trump went with “they’re eating the dogs?”)

But Brennan’s fact check will help goose GOP turnout in the end. It incenses the right and drives some stay-at-homes into Trump’s camp. I have no love (or even any respect) for J.D. Vance, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it when some snide moderator dunks on him. 

I’d say more about the vice-presidential debate, but I’ve forgotten it already (as, I’m sure, have you). 

In Other News

Iran launched another major missile barrage against Israel. Luckily, this one was once again intercepted by allied efforts, resulting in minimal casualties. Once again, Joe Biden wants Israel to “take the win.” 

But, if Iran achieves nuclear breakout, it just needs one missile to incinerate Tel Aviv. Former prime minister Naftali Bennett said that Israel should act now, responding to this latest assault by bombing Iran until all of its nuclear sites are destroyed. While Democrats like to claim that Netanyahu is forcing his belligerence on a nation, Bennett’s comment demonstrates that if Israel successfully crippled the Iranian nuclear threat, the Israeli public would rejoice. It’s a coin flip as to whether Biden would denounce Israel’s “provocation,” or express gladness that the Iranian nuclear program was gone. 

If the United States had better leadership, we would help Israel in this effort. In fact, we would initiate it, using the strike against Israel as an opportunity to turn Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant into glass, along with the rest of Iran’s nuclear sites. While we’re at it, we could take out a few of their airbases and sink half their fleet. As they did when Reagan ordered the sinking of their warships in 1988, Iranian leadership would probably blink. 

Perhaps President Biden will surprise me and join Israel in a coordinated assault on the source of most of the trouble in the Middle East, but I fear that he will instead do everything in his power to prevent Israel from taking out one of our greatest foes. 

Fortunately, the news from the Middle East on the first anniversary of October 7^th has been positive. Israel is in a stronger position than it was a year ago, and its enemies are on the run. May the coming year bring victory to Israel and defeat to its foes. 

On the home front, the International Longshoremen’s Association shut down ports up and down the East Coast in order to demand a 77% pay raise over six years. For those who struggle with arithmetic, that would raise a salary of $100,000 to $177,000 by 2030. The ILA had turned down an offer of 50% over six years. Luckily, the ILA reached an agreement with USMX (the United States Maritime Alliance) to suspend the strike until January in exchange for a 62% raise. (When was the last time you got a 62% pay raise?)

But that was after three days of striking and a backlog which will take weeks to clear. Already, shortages were being reported in grocery stores, and if the strike had been allowed to continue, it could have been economically devastating. 

This is what strikebreakers are for. The ILA is a corrupt monopoly with ties to organized crime. The idea that it can shut down commerce on the East Coast in order to demand exorbitant wage increases is insufferable. I’m not in favor of the government making unions illegal, but I do believe in enforcing racketeering laws, investigating unions for their (not so distant) history of organized crime, and eliminating all regulations which prevent businesses from firing workers who walk off the job (which is what businesses should generally do). The longshoremen are not being exploited. They are (overpaid) skilled laborers who can demand good wages from their employers even if they don’t have the backing of “Union Joe” and the federal government. They have already managed to forestall automation to such an extent that the U.S. has the least efficient ports in the developed world. Fixing that may require breaking the back of the ILA, which would have the benefit of improving overall American economic well-being. 

Unless, of course, we end up with a protectionist president who blockades our ports with tariffs and prevents anything from coming in anyway, sending America back into the 19^th century and allowing China to finally eat our lunch. 

While we’re on the subject of Donald Trump, it’s worth noting that in the last ten days he said that Kamala Harris was born “mentally impaired” and reiterated his commitment to prosecuting anyone who crosses him in this election should he win. Politics is hardball and all of that, and you have to have a thick skin – I get that. But this is the party of “family values?” The party which believed in character and virtue? The postliberal right likes to talk about American decadence and immorality. Is Trump not the picture of decadence? How is this the man who is supposed to lead America back into being a Christian nation? 

If it weren’t for the Democrats, Trump would be nowhere in American politics today, and if it weren’t for Donald Trump, the Democratic Party would collapse on its own contradictions. 

Why I Don’t Despair

I hadn’t intended to establish such a dour and dyspeptic tone for this column when I initially began writing it, but events this last month have conspired otherwise. To balance it out, I thought I would close on a note which, if not optimistic, is at least on the hopeful side. 

On last week’s The Editors podcast, National Review’s Charlie Cooke spoke about how bothered he is by how willing many Americans on both sides are to hate large parts of their own country. He said that he’d been to all fifty states and loved all of them, and that he loved the blue parts of America and the red parts of America. 

This instantly rang true to me, as I’ve noticed something similar when driving across America myself in the last several years. I’ve lived abroad, and the most-strikingly dissimilar parts of this country still feel more like home to me than anywhere else in the world. No matter where I go in America, there is some sense I have that this is how life is supposed to be, a sense I am unable to feel when away from this country.

From the Smithsonian – one of the greatest collections in the entire world – to Provo (home of BYU), this is a wild and eclectic country. From the rural parts of West Virginia (i.e., all of West Virginia) to the urban sprawl of Denver and Chicago, America is one place. And there isn’t any part of it I would trade away. America’s original thirteen colonies. Our vast expanse of wilderness in the mountain West. Our beautiful left coast and our far-flung outposts (Alaska and Hawaii). And everything in between. 

Everywhere I go, I meet Americans I like. Most are as upset about this election and the current state of our politics as you and me. Some of them are voting for Harris and some aren’t voting and some are voting for Trump, but they all agree on this. And no matter what state I’m in, I’ve met strangers willing to drop everything to jumpstart your car, no questions asked. Drivers who, when a mother driving her children hops a curb and flips over, pull over to the side of a busy four-lane road on a rainy November to jump out and stop traffic and run over to the car to make sure everyone is okay. People who, if they see someone in trouble, will stop to offer help. 

We aren’t always those people, but most of us want to be, and I think this nation could be more like that if we made an effort. The best of us and the worst of us are both there, and it depends on the decisions we make as to which comes out. We’re the only dominant nation in the history of the world which has ever demanded so little of the world we dominate, or given so much so readily. May we always remain that nation.

Ben Connelly is a writer, long-distance runner, former engineer, and author of “Grit: A Practical Guide to Developing Physical and Mental Toughness.” He publishes short stories and essays at Hardihood Books. @benconnelly6712